The Concrete Pearl (27 page)

“Bless you, Tess,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t able to stomach a single bite.

“Don’t bless me,” she said. “I’m getting paid.” Cocking her head in Spain’s direction, she added, “Bless Spencer-for-Hire.”

When the media player emerged onto the screen, it became immediately apparent that the inserted CD wasn’t a CD at all, but a DVD.

On the computer, a familiar but disturbing image appeared.

Chapter 65

What can you say about a home movie shot from a remote controlled camera set up on a tripod inside the bedroom of some hotel-no-tell? What do you say about the sight of a tight golden boy going at it doggy style with a twenty-something concrete blond? What can you say about his very own father-in-law servicing a second peroxide job, same position? What the hell can you say about the mirror set out on the bed, the cut up coke laid out in neat little lines in the center of it along with the gold Amex they used in place of a razorblade and a rolled up twenty dollar bill for a straw? What can you say about the cries of passion, the sloppy laughing and the empty bottles of Dom strewn across the bed?

Maybe what you say is this: Hey, this is the construction business and I’m not the least bit fucking surprised.

There was however something to be said of the discovery I made when rolling up the convention center blueprints. A separate site plan slipped out from in between the electrical drawings.

I laid it out on top of the bankers boxes.

Spain looked over my shoulder.

“Another site plan,” he said.

“Yup,” I said.

“More Pearl Street?”

I set an extended index finger on the title bar.

“Lake Desolation Estates,” he said. “Marino-Farrell Development.”

“That’s the Desolation Kill right there,” I said setting my index finger on the lower right corner of the plan. “See how it snakes its way through the center of the site?” My finger traced the path of the winding stream. “And that’s where it empties into the lake.”

Spain studied the plan.

“What’s all this stuff then?” he asked, pointing his own finger to the many squared off parcels of land set side by side one another.

“That, my PI friend, is what’s commonly called a subdivision.”

“Subdivision,” he said. “As in suburban sprawl.”

“Looks to me like Marino and Farrell were planning on developing that beautiful rural area. Making it a hot spot for a bunch of McMansions.”

“That’s not all,” Spain added, pointing with his index finger. “That say Casino?”

He was right. Butting up against the lake was a large parcel with the outline of a big box-shaped building in the center of it. The word “Casino” was printed inside the box.

“You’re getting pretty good at reading these prints Spain. Maybe one day you can come work for me.”

“We keep you out of Sing Sing first,” he said.

“Priorities,” I said.

“Where you think they were gonna get the money for developing all that land?”

“The convention center would be my guess. What better way to launder bad construction money than to invest it in another bad construction project?”

Over the next hour we viewed the other DVD. It was a lot different from the first one. The plot didn’t revolve around a sex party hosted by Farrell and his extended family. This one was all about landscapes. More specifically, it showed Lake Desolation and then moved on to show the Desolation Kill. It also contained panoramic shots of the pine and oak tree-covered hillsides that would be leveled to make building lots.

The disk also revealed something else: Farrell dumping something into the lake from out of a five gallon taping compound bucket. The stuff was dark and watery with little clumps of something unrecognizable in it. It was the same stuff I sniffed in the back of Farrell’s ride and nearly threw up over; the same stuff that old man Dott was transporting from his tow truck to his garage offices.

It’s exactly what I said to Spain.

He got up, moved closer to the computer, pressed a key that paused the action. He pointed an extended finger at the still shot like a shooter and his pistol.

“Marino and Farrell were trying to poison Lake Desolation,” he said. “No wonder that little kid couldn’t catch any fish. There aren’t any.”

“But why film your own crime?” I posed.

“Marino was the photographer. He was always the photographer.” Turning to me, he continued. “He filmed Jimmy kissing Natalie in the Thatcher Street Pub; he filmed himself and Jimmy getting down with two blond pros. Now he films your golden boy doing this. Maybe he made the film to prove to some filthy nameless investors that he was taking care of business.”

“Or it could be that he’d been setting Jimmy up all along, and Jimmy was too stupid to realize it…Or too drunk and too in lust.”

“Jimmy probably trusted Marino implicitly. At least initially, Spike. The old man probably tossed him a line every time he broke out the camera. You know, ‘Hey Jimmy, smile, you’re on
Candid Camera’
… Or ‘Hey Jimmy I’m just shooting the beautiful landscape for our future development investors.’ I mean, how many crime videos you seen on cable television? People being filmed in the act?”

He had a point. Put people in front of a camera—even criminals—and they suddenly become Brad fucking Pitt.

He turned to me, still pointing to the picture on the laptop.

“You see that there?” he said, the tip of his finger on one of the little black clumps of solid that was pouring out of the bucket. “Those tiny little clams…I can bet you dollars to donuts they’re parasites.”

It came to me then.

“You poison the lake, no more fish. No tourists or sportsmen.”

“They weren’t poisoning the lake so much as they were poisoning the property values,” Spain deduced.

I nodded.

I said, “They could buy up the land on the cheap from those pigheaded farmers, move in with the bulldozers. And Dott not only owns some of that lakefront property, he was assisting them with the poisoning. He’d probably swallowed a brick when I showed up to get a look at Farrell’s car.”

“I’m guessing Dott was willing to take a hit on his portion of the property now,” Spain added, “for huge backend dividends.”

Davey arrived back from his mission. In his hand he gripped a plain plastic shopping bag. The bag held two separate sealed envelopes containing initial DNA matches for both Natalie and Farrell. Or more precisely, matches that proved the two had shared the condom found on the stream bank.

Davey turned his attention to Spain.

“You know they won’t let you use this stuff in court,” he mumbled in the same raspy Joe Strummer voice he belted out his punk songs. “You fought the law to get it and you know that the law’s gonna win every time.”

“Santiago is my former APD partner,” Spain said. “I know more about his past than most wives know about their husbands. All I have to do is prove first that Marino and Farrell were colluding on numerous asbestos removal projects; that they’d formed an asbestos removal racket that included a very affordable independent testing outfit; that things went bad for them both when they starting sleeping with the same woman and when Jimmy started screaming for more of the profits.”

“Greed, the great motivator,” I said. “Lust, the great equalizer.”

“Love stinks,” Davey said, a semblance of a smile cracking on his long, clean shaven face.

“Listen,” Spain said, the initial DNA results in hand, “I don’t have to prove any of their actual crimes. That’s for the police to do later. All we have to prove is that a conspiracy existed to nail Spike with the PS 20 asbestos scam and with Natalie’s murder. Maybe even with Farrell’s murder when he turns up dead. They both had to die and they needed someone to pin it on. That alone will shift the burden of guilt from Spike back to Marino.” Cocking his head over his shoulder, he said, “All this stuff behind me…the A-1 Environmental records, the Analytical Lab records, the Pearl Street Convention Center site plans calling for PS 20 to be contaminated long before last Monday…all that stuff is the backup in our case against Marino. And as for Spike? You’re going to be the state’s number one witness.”

Spain put his jacket back on, pulled his automatic, released the clip, gave it a quick visual, then slapped it back home, returning the piece to his belt holster.

“You want me to call the DA?” Davey posed. Then he sang like John Lennon, “
He’s only sleeping…
”

The call to Santiago…The wake up call that would get him out of bed, wake him up to the truth.

“Nope,” I said. “That one’s for me to make.”

Spain punched in a seven digit number on Tess’s cell. He handed it to me. I put it to my ear, waited for a connection.

“Santiago,” I said when he answered groggily, mouth full of cotton. “This is Spike Harrison. I’m turning myself in to your office, one half hour. No staties, feds, no APD, no ADAs. Just you.”

“How do I know this is you?” he said.

“I’ll be bringing along an old partner of yours. I understand you share quite a history together.”

“Spain,” he said.

“See you in a half hour.”

I slapped the phone closed.

“How much do you trust Santiago to be in his office alone?” I asked Spain.

“I trust him like you would any old partner,” he said. “About as far as I can pick him up and toss him…Alliances have changed for us over the years.”

I said, “If we’re bringing him evidence that will not be admissible in court, but that proves my innocence in all this beyond the shadow of a doubt, I want it all caught on video tape. And not just any video. I want the media to know about it.”

“Collins,” Spain said. “News Channel 13. You promised her the exclusive.”

“I’ll make this call from the Charger,” I said.

Chapter 66

How does a headstrong girl like me go about saving my ass from prison?

By working up some quality one-on-one face time with the city’s top prosecutor.

Spain and I sat inside Santiago’s office at a long wood conference table. The DA sat directly across from us. His dark wavy hair was disheveled from sleep, his white button-down wrinkled, as though he’d just picked it up off his bedroom floor, his expression teeth-clenched tight.

At the opposite end of the room stood Chris Collins and her cameraman. Collins was real put together in her red mini-skirt suit, as if she had somehow anticipated the unplanned early morning get together. She stood off to the side without comment. Not a field reporter, so much as a documenting witness to the proceedings.

Without ceremony or comment, Spain handed over the evidence, piece by piece.

A single box that contained A1-Environmental and Analytical Labs files and that represented just a part of all the boxed files that had been stored inside the Marino Construction warehouse; the .9mm I discovered tossed in the woods with Marino’s prints on it; the empty Skoll tobacco container found on the stream bank; the used condom; the spent shell casing; the initial DNA results taken from Farrell’s chewed tobacco and from Natalie’s corpse—all of it to match the DNA samples lifted off the used condom; all of it proof that the three players had been present at the public fishing access area on the Desolation Kill, and that at the very least, the possibility of a murder took place there.

We also handed over the in-progress contract documents for the convention center along with the site plan for the proposed Lake Desolation Estates and Casino. Finally we presented two DVDs, the first showing Jimmy and his father-in-law sexing it up together and the second, the poisoning of Lake Desolation by parasitic clams better known to environmentalists and scientists as Pohnpei clams.

“And one more thing,” Spain said, turning towards the camera, looking into it as if addressing his maker. “I want to go on public record that Ava ‘Spike’ Harrison and I spent the entire night of Tuesday, June 16th  together. She never left my side for any reason. There’s no possible way she left her North Albany apartment, got in her Jeep, drove to PS 20 and killed Natalie Barnes. At least not without my knowing about it. And for that, I am willing to submit myself to a lie-detector test.” He turned his eyes back on Santiago. “I believe Peter Marino, in further attempt to hide and obstruct both his compliance in the A-1 Environmental Solution’s asbestos scam and in the murder of his son-in-law Jimmy Farrell, stole Ava Harrison’s own framing hammer from out of her parked Jeep, then used it to kill Ms. Barnes. In doing so, he would make it appear that Ms. Harrison was the murderer.”

Santiago maintained a stone face throughout the proceedings. It was a great risk Spain was taking. Not only in accusing Marino of the murders, but also in publicly and openly fibbing about spending the entire night with me. If in the end our plan was to backfire and I was still accused of murder, he could now be charged with conspiracy.

Santiago sat back, staring at us both.

He then looked at the camera as opposed to looking into it. I knew if he could have, he would insist that Collins kill the tape. But no way in hell could he do that without raising some kind of suspicion about himself. He was a public figure, voted into office by a majority mandate. Already he was eyeing the attorney general’s seat. Or was it the mayor’s office?

In his low, steady voice, he said, “You both realize that much of this so-called evidence won’t be utilized in a court of law. Nor would your Polygraph be admissible…No matter the outcome, Mr. Spain; Ms. Harrison.”

“We understand that,” I said. “But what’s right is right, Mr. Santiago. And I for one felt the need to go after the truth.”

“Mr. Santiago,” Spain went on, “I have the good fortune of knowing an extraordinary young woman about to enter law school. Her name is Stella, a waitress at Tess’s Lark Tavern who is legally deaf from having endured a physically traumatic birth. She’s a bright, attractive young woman who plans to spend her life in the defense of children who are abused and neglected and have nowhere to turn. Now how in the world could I face a brave young woman like that if I weren’t to seek out the truth when someone like Spike Harrison has been wrongly accused?”